If a California King Isn’t Big Enough … Consider the Alaskan King
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Welcome to Sleep Better Week on the Strategist, where we’re helping you find everything you need to get your best rest — from testing the most comfortable mattresses to asking nosy questions about other people’s sleep routines. For more, head to ourSleep Better Week hub.
Bigger than a California king (six-by-seven feet), a Wyoming king (seven-by-seven), and even a Vermont king (eight-by-eight), the gigantic Alaskan-king mattress has an almost mythical quality to it. Measuring nine feet by nine feet — four feet wider and a roughly two feet longer than a standard queen — these extra-large mattresses are mostly the stuff of imagination and curiosity, a “Did you know?” fun fact for anyone with an average build or an average bedroom. But they are real, and I talked to three people who have actually purchased one, plus a couple of execs who sell them, to find out what it’s really like to sleep in (and make) a megabed.
For the most part, an Alaskan king is like any other mattress — just square and enormous
Unlike most common mattress sizes — your twins, your fulls, your queens — the “traditional” Alaskan king is square, not rectangular. The standard dimensions are 108 inches by 108 inches, but they also come in a few variations on the “very big” theme. For example, theAlaskan King Bed Company, so named for its singular product focus, sells an Alaskan King Mini, an Alaskan King Shorty, and an Alaskan King Biggie.
Like any other mattress, an Alaskan king can be made from a variety of materials (all foam,hybrid,innerspring, etc). Alaskan King Bed Company director of sales Vinnie Sampson says that building one isn’t procedurally different — it just requires more space and more people. “If you’re making a regular king mattress, one craftsman can handle that pretty much from the beginning to end,” Sampson explains. “With the bigger bed, sometimes you need two, three, or four people to make one mattress and then you need more space in your workshop or factory just to store the bigger materials, finished mattresses, all of those things.”
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But owing to their unique largesse, Alaskan kings are sometimes constructed in multiple pieces for the purposes of shipping and moveability. Alaskan-king mattresses manufactured by 3Z Brands, which are sold at bothNolahandAlaskan King Sleep by Brooklyn Bedding, consist of four mattress quadrants, a foam topper, and a zippable cover to hold it all together. They ship like any other bed in a box for the customer to assemble themselves.
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A mattress fit for big houses, big bodies, and big (co-sleeping) families
Both Sampson and Scott Paladini, head of brand at 3Z Brands, told me the increasing size of homes built in the past few decades has inspired some people to buy giant mattresses simply because they can. “If you have a multimillion-dollar ranch in Jackson, Wyoming, you might drop a couple of these things in these rooms that are massive, because a king bed might look tiny or weird,” Paladini says. Manufacturers often recommend that a bedroom be 16 feet by 16 feet or larger to accommodate an Alaskan king.
Obvious customers include large or especially tall people who find it difficult to sleep comfortably on standard mattresses and couples whostruggle with sharing the bedbut don’t want a “sleep divorce.” That’s what originally led Stephanie Brigley, who works in finance for a health-care company, to purchase an Alaskan king. She’s an early-to-bed type who would get frustrated when her (now ex-) partner would come to bed late and inevitably wake her up. When she foundBig Mattress Co. in an online search, her first thought was “This seems really ridiculous.” But they had the space, so they went for it — and ended up loving the mattress and the glorious sleep it afforded them, even though the relationship didn’t last. (Alaskan kings are also discussed occasionally in Reddit threads devoted topolyamory, though I couldn’t find much evidence of many people in that community actually buying them.)
I also encountered several co-sleeping families, who Paladini says account for a growing market of Alaskan-king buyers. For them, an extra-large mattress is a genuine solution to the reality that a king-size mattress is usually too small for two adults and multiple children.
That was the case for Sandi Glandt, a productivity coach who says her family began co-sleeping when she and her husband got fed up with the “two-hour production” it took to get their two elementary-school-age kids to sleep every night. “It would be us reading to the kids, then falling asleep in there and sleepwalking into our bed,” she says. “The next morning I’d wake up and I’d be so tired.” Once they turned to co-sleeping, Glandt found she enjoyed having time in the evening to read or watch a movie all together in one king bed. But a different problem emerged after everyone went to sleep: “My husband would fall off the bed or the kids would kick you in the face and knee you in the back,” Glandt says.
When she saw an Instagram post about Alaskan-king mattresses, she thought, “This is the solution to our prayers.” She ultimately ordered Alaskan King Bed Company’s Grand Royale Alaskan King Shorty, which is as wide as a standard Alaskan king (108 inches) but only as long as a typical queen (80 inches) and allows for the quality time she loves without making her feel squished or scrunched all night.
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Nicolet Bougard, who works in sports and entertainment marketing, told me that she and her six-foot-five husband purchased an Alaskan king shortly before the birth of their first child. They were already sharing the bed with two dogs — and, with a baby on the way, knew they wanted more space.
The baby currently sleeps in her own crib, but the couple is enjoying the extra room and looking forward to movie nights in the big bed once their daughter is older. “It’s more than we had ever spent on a mattress previously, but we were just thinking about all the memories we’ll be able to create within that cozy space,” Bougard says, adding that her husband “loves to ‘starfish’ but has not been able to do that since he was a teenager because of how tall he is.” Now he has plenty of room to spread out: “I cannot tell you the last time my husband has told me to scoot over in bed, which prior to having an Alaskan-king mattress was probably every single night.”
Prepare to spend $3,000-plus on the mattress alone — and possibly to special-order your sheets
Assuming you already have a big-enough bedroom — Brigley advises measuring everything multiple times to make sure it’ll actually fit, “especially if you’re trying to put any nightstands or anything next to your bed” — the first thing to plan for is the price. You should anticipate spending at least $3,000 on an Alaskan king, though many cost much more. That doesn’t include the bed frame, which can add another $2,000-plus. Most manufacturers of Alaskan-king mattresses also sell frames that will fit them, but it’s rare to find them at third-party retailers.
The same is true for bedding. Both Brigley and Bougard have bought Alaskan-king-size sheets on Amazon, but the options are extremely limited. You’ll have a lot more to choose from if you buy a (pricier) set from the mattress makers themselves. Glandt took the one-stop-shop approach and bought everything in once place for a total of more than $12,000.
Get white-glove delivery if you can
Brigley’s Alaskan king shipped in multiple boxes that were delivered to her garage via forklift. The mattress still had to be assembled, so she ended up hiring help to haul everything upstairs and put the bed together; if she did it again, she’d look closer at the fine print and pay extra for white-glove delivery.
Bougard’s Alaskan king shipped in two giant boxes — one for the folded-up mattress and one for a box spring. She and her husband enlisted friends to help with set-up, but “if we didn’t have strong, able-bodied friends, we probably would’ve had to hire a TaskRabbit or something,” she says.
For Glandt, things were much easier: Her purchase of the Grande Royale mattress from Alaskan King Bed Company came with white-glove delivery by default.
The Alaskan-king owners I spoke to are converts to the big-bed lifestyle
Despite the high price tag, limited bedding options, and setup difficulties, owning an Alaskan king has convinced everyone I spoke to that all the challenges are worth it. “A third of your life is spent in your bed,” says Glandt, reciting a stat that helped justify her purchase. Bougard shared a similar sentiment: “There’s so many people out there who will spend $5,000 on a handbag. Why not do the same with a bed?”
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